Five Times Steve Rogers Was Entirely Too Perceptive
by elzebrook
Summary: ...And One Time Someone Returned the Favor. Steve notices too damn much and never learned to keep his mouth shut, but somehow knows what to say anyway. Essentially deleted scenes from Touch, my other fic.


**A/N**: Basically an excuse for me to write feeeelliinnngggssss. And domestic Avengers, because I find that concept weirdly adorable. Please excuse my cavalier treatment of tenses.

And go read Touch, if you haven't, because otherwise Sophie won't make sense.

* * *

One

Watching Sophie get ready in the morning, stretched out on the bed after coming back from his morning run. Sophie's morning rituals never cease to intrigue him. She spends nearly a half an hour staring at the clothes hanging on the right side of the closet, never the left, and then decisively plucks out a blouse, a skirt, a cardigan. The clothes are quietly fashionable, never designed to attract attention, and every single piece, Steve is fairly certain, could go with any other piece, but Sophie meticulously decides on a different combination every day.

Steve watches her dress, pulling on a pair of tights underneath her chosen clothing, and slipping on one of her seemingly endless pair of oxfords, before swiping on some mascara and swapping out her glasses.

Sophie has two pairs of glasses, a black pair that says young serious professional, and a pair with plum-colored frames that are almost cats-eyes. Steve realizes that he can count the times he's seen her outside of her apartment wearing the purple ones on…well, not quite one hand, but it's not that many.

He stares into her closet again. The right side of the closet is all her librarianing clothes, as he's come to think of them, subdued, conservative, an ever rotating uniform designed to disappear as much as possible. The left side, by utter contrast, is full of cocktail dresses, ballgowns, some suits which he knows must be the feminine version of Tony's (that is, custom made and probably the cost of a small country), and some scraps of clingy fabric that Sophie calls clubwear, which Steve has never seen her in and doesn't want to because it would probably break his brain. All things, he realizes, that he's never seen her wear glasses with at all.

The back wall is mostly taken up by a dresser which Steve knows is full of jeans and t-shirts and what are generally considered normal clothes these days. Hanging above it are some dresses and sweaters and other clothes that have more personality than the right side, and are more relaxed than the left.

He looks it all over again. Librarian. Socialite. And…something in between.

"You do that on purpose," he says, understanding dawning.

She looks at him over the top of her glasses.

"Do what?"

"The way you dress. All the time. You're deliberately shaping the way people perceive you. You never actually let people see you unless you decide they should."

It's not meant as an accusation, he's really just thinking out loud and wondering why it took him this long to realize, but the way her posture shifts he can tell she's taking it as one.

"So? People make a lot of judgments, especially about someone with my sort of history. I'd rather not deal with that crap if I can help it."

"No, it's not…I'm not blaming you. I have no right to judge the way anyone dresses, I ran around for years wrapped in the American flag so people would buy war bonds."

This gets a laugh from her, as he knew it would. He gets off the bed and crosses to her, running his hands down her arms as if petting a disgruntled cat.

"Everyone has their armor," he says. And somehow, as she smiles at him, he knows it was the exact right thing to say.

Two

Standing across from Natasha over Clint's hospital bed after a battle that went gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Clint got out from surgery hours ago, and barring nothing drastic happening, he'll be fine, but he hasn't woken up yet.

Watching Natasha's unexpressive face and tight movements, the way she tries to look at everything but Clint, her eyes sliding to him as if she can't control herself, except Natasha can always control herself. Remembering her expression as Clint fell, a look Steve has never seen on her face and hopes to God he'll never see again, and it hits him.

"You've never told him you love him, have you?"

Natasha meets his eyes for a second, and he thinks he sees half a dozen responses form in her mind—everything from a simple raised eyebrow to love is for children, but ultimately she says nothing, which is more of an admission than anything she could ever say.

Later, when Clint wakes up enough to focus on her, he gives her a soft, wry, resigned, understanding half of a smile before slipping back into unconsciousness and Steve, now watching from the doorway, hands full of coffee for them both says "Don't worry about it. He knows."

Three

Scattered around the common area, late late at night after some mission or other, the six of them way too wound up to go to sleep, somehow they've gotten to the point of sharing stories from their misspent youths or ill-spent childhoods.

Not a one of them, except for Thor, had a happy childhood, although what constitutes a happy childhood for an Asgardian would definitely be child abuse on earth (seriously, who takes their kid bilge-snipe hunting?), but somehow the four in the morning honesty-magic has done its work on even them.

Tony shares the time he nearly burned down the house at age eleven trying to make a particle accelerator, Natasha tells the tale of a hit involving only a penguin, liquid soap, a straw and some twizzlers, which shouldn't be funny, by my god is it ever, Steve of the time Bucky decided they should run away and join the circus, which spurs Clint to share some of his so-surreal-it-must-be-true circus shenanigans, and the circle of story-telling spins round and round until Steve gets up to get more water and find Bruce standing in the kitchen, drinking tea and watching from the sidelines, holding himself ever-so-slightly apart, and Steve realizes Bruce hasn't told them one single thing.

"You don't really have any good memories from your childhood, do you?" asks Steve, the lateness and exhaustion making him even more blunt than usual. Bruce smiles at him, tired and sad.

"Not a whole lot, no."

Steve thinks for a moment.

"Tell you what. We'll make some."

Bruce gives him an amusedly confused look, but the next Saturday Steve shoots him a text in the morning to meet in the common room, where JARVIS has cued up morning cartoons starting from the year Bruce turned seven.

They do this almost every week, and eventually the rest of the team figures it out and then it's not an uncommon thing to find the Earth's mightiest heroes watching 1970s cartoons and arguing over doughnuts at nine in morning on weekends.

Four

Gathered on the bridge of the helicarrier, seeing Phil for the first time after Fury told them he wasn't actually dead. The reactions to the announcement a week before were varied—Tony and Pepper both furious, Thor confused but pleased, Bruce nonreactive (big surprise there). Clint's jaw tightened and Natasha just shrugged and said something about never trusting death unless she touched the body.

But he was alive, and it was an unexpected gift enough that they didn't look too closely. For the moment.

Steve hung back because he'd barely known the man, and, let's face it, he really was kind of awkward in social situations. But what he saw from his vantage point on the edge of things almost always made up for his inability to converse like a normal person or know what to do with his hands outside of battle. And this time was no different.

He catches little glimpses of his teammates, valuable snippets because at this point their team was a new and fragile thing, all still wary and circling each other like stray dogs. A split second of seriousness on Tony's face, a genuine grin on Bruce's. A suspicious glitter in Thor's eye. A tension in Clint's face which Steve thought was just how the man looked was gone. Natasha remained almost—almost—unreadable, except for one moment when her eyes softened when Clint and Phil were next to each other.

Tony talking a mile a minute like he pretty much always does, and Steve catches the last of it as he says "Sorry about your cards, Coulson."

And there, for a tenth of a second, Steve sees genuine sorrow on the man's face before it slips back into unremarkable calm.

"It was a small price to pay for the world," says Phil. Steve detaches himself from the wall and comes over to shake the man's hand and if he hadn't already figured out how to read the agent's expressionless face, he would've totally missed the look of utter delight.

And then, because it's Steve, he can't get that sadness out of his head, and because it's Steve, he can't not do anything about it.

He's already figured out how Ebay works, more or less, but who knew trading cards were actually that expensive, so he brings up his idea to Pepper, who is the most approachable out of everyone, and then she talks to Tony, who puts JARVIS on it, but then because apparently no one in the building can keep a secret (not even the spies, don't think that irony doesn't escape him), everyone is suddenly in on it.

The surreallness of his whole life doesn't really hit Steve until he finds Thor obsessively trawling the internet for 70 year old bits of paper or other obscure paraphernalia bearing Steve's own likeness at three in the morning on the stairs, and then he has to go sit down for a while with his head between his knees.

But eventually they have the full set, and some other things besides—some of which are apparently incredibly rare and somehow in mint condition and procured by Tony who seems fairly uncomfortable if anyone asks any questions—and thanks to a late night red bull fueled hacking adventure, they know Phil's birthday.

They don't throw him a party, not really, but after a manufactured debriefing they do give him the box and Tony hassles him to open it until he does. They all know he's touched, but if Steve thought the handshake after Phil came back from the dead elicited a look of delight, it's nothing—nothing—compared to the look on the agent's face as Steve pulls out a pen and says "I was going to sign them, but I didn't know if you wanted a dedication or just a signature."

Five

In Tony's lab, at around one in the morning, because somehow Steve is the only one who can pull him out of there when Pepper's gone to make sure he sleeps and eats. Not even Sophie has the ability, but Sophie tries to avoid the whole superhero aspects of everything as much as possible.

The music's off and the lights are dim and no loud tools are running and Steve wonders if Tony's just kind of passed out in there again, but as he slips in he sees Tony outlined in the light bouncing off a projector screen, drink in hand. Steve knows, somehow, in his bones, what he'll see before he looks and finds himself unable not to anyway.

Howard. Older, just starting to go grey, mustache as trim as it ever was, bouncing a small boy on his knee, smiling up at the camera, talking to whoever's behind it. Howard, setting Anthony down and kneeling beside him to fiddle with some toy—or possibly some electrical circuitry, although Steve thinks perhaps for this family there would be no difference. Howard, standing up and catching a young woman, lovely and dark, around the waist to plant a kiss on her cheek as she passes. She laughs and swats at him without real annoyance and then gives a small wave to the camera and Steve is unable to help himself anymore.

"She was beautiful," he says. Tony jerks and looks around, but Steve catches the expression on his face before it's entirely replaced with something more usual.

"Well, I had to get my good looks from somewhere," says Tony, but Steve can tell his heart's not really in it.

"You haven't slept for 36 hours," Steve says. "Or eaten for 17."

"I ordered…something," says Tony. "Not too long ago. I think I ate it too."

"You need sleep."

"I won't be able to for at least another…six hours? Maybe seven, calculating for traffic."

Or until Pepper gets back, in other words. Steve sighs, and Tony's eyes flicker up to the screen again. Steve watches that expression come back for half a second and something twists a little inside him because suddenly he knows.

"You don't actually hate him, do you?"

Tony turns to him, bristling, snark at the ready, but Steve is a solid wall and Tony just deflates.

"No," he says, simply. "I don't."

Tony gives him a wry, awful smile. "I wish I did though. It would make everything so much easier."

"I know," says Steve. And he does, really, he does. And somehow that comes through, because Tony looks like he's about to argue, but catches a glimpse of Steve's face.

"Huh. You actually do, don't you?" Tony regards him for a moment and then tilts his glass. "Drink?"

Steve accepts a soda and the conversation ends there, the air full of things unsaid but understood. JARVIS packs up the ghosts of Tony's childhood and puts on some asinine plotless movie with cars and guns and explosions and they argue about the physics of the stunts.

Pepper and Sophie find them the next morning around eight, passed out on the couch and take about ten years worth of blackmail pictures and then by mutual accord let them be to sort out that morning awkwardness on their own.

Minus One

It was one of those Sundays, the lazy rainy ones where all you really want to do is curl up with some cocoa and book, or in front of a fire with your best girl and Steve still can't quite believe his luck because that's exactly what the plan is.

He's making cocoa in the kitchen while Sophie picks a movie, and he looks over to see her staring at him with a soft little smile, the firelight washing her in gold.

"What?"

"Sometimes I feel like my life is the world's most female oriented porno."

He snorts as he stirs vanilla into the saucepan.

"Here I am, in one of the most luxurious penthouses in New York, wearing a three hundred dollar bathrobe, watching the American wet dream make me hot cocoa. And then I'm about 90% sure he'll do the dishes and give me a foot rub."

She shakes her head, grinning.

"The peak of human perfection, all those damn muscles, making me cocoa."

Steve shifts his weight, suddenly feeling awkward under her gaze.

"Huh," he hears her say. He looks up and meets green eyes that are looking at him far too shrewdly to be comfortable.

"You're not actually really ok with the way you look, are you?"

He stares at her for a moment, because he's not sure he's heard anything more ridiculous in his life. This body is nearly indestructible, does whatever he asks of it, is everything he ever dreamed being of as a scrawny asthmatic weakling.

And yet…he spent the first twenty-three years of his life hating his body, wishing it was anything other than itself, and then he got his wish, through someone else's whim, from some magic formula in a bottle that no one has ever been able to understand. And the—his—new body's great, really, but somehow it's never really felt like…his.

And the fact that women—and the occasional man—literally throw themselves, or various articles of clothing of a personal nature, at him these days, just makes it all even weirder. Because he knows they're not doing it for him, at him, at Steve.

He realizes Sophie is still watching him, waiting for him to say something.

"Yeah, I'm afraid people only love me cuz I'm pretty," he deadpans, which would get anyone else to leave off, but this is Sophie and she of all people knows a thing or two about hiding behind sarcasm.

"You know," she says, lightly, coming over and setting out two mugs, "muscles were never really my thing, before."

"Mm," he says, pouring the cocoa, not really wanting to talk about this, not really wanting to think about his weird body issues.

"I mean, with the crowd I hung out with, that's not surprising. It's kind of hard to be anything but skinny when you're snorting cocaine in club bathrooms instead of eating proper meals."

He looks up, startled at her easy admission of what he can't help thinking of as immoral activities. He knows about her life before, but it still catches him off guard.

"Jeremy…he was a puckish little thing. A good two inches shorter than me I think. Quite adorable, really." Sophie moves as if to pick up her mug, but catches his hand instead, turning it over to trace little scribbles of sensation on his palm.

"What I'm trying to say is…the muscles, the superhero, all of that…it's an intriguing bonus, I won't lie, but it's not…what I'm after. In a boyfriend. I'm much more interested in the man who makes me cocoa and stays up til one in the morning to argue with me about Asimov and Samuel Delaney and occasionally still forgets how to use a microwave apparently."

He bridles in mock offense. "I know perfectly well how to use the microwave, it just doesn't heat milk evenly and then the cocoa tastes funny."

She's laughing at him now, but he doesn't mind, he never minds anything that gets her to look like that, easy happiness crinkling her eyes. He smiles back and she reaches up a hand to tangle in his hair, trail along his jaw.

"You know what my favorite part of you is? Besides your brain?"

He's lost in her gaze now, in the dopey way of new lovers everywhere, his world a vignette of her face, her voice.

"Your eyes. They're the part that didn't change, that didn't need to. They're the part that's actually you."

And somehow, as the remaining shadows of whatever he didn't want to talk about leave his eyes, she knows it was the exact right thing to say.


End file.
